


if you remember me everyone else can forget

by jacksmannequin



Category: Take That (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Apocalypse, Character(s) death, Death, Gen, Pre-Apocalypse, end of the world AU, this makes no sense scientifically speaking lmao, this was meant to be based off 'cry' but then idk what happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 18:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8220556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksmannequin/pseuds/jacksmannequin
Summary: “In another world, another moment, another life, maybe I could have loved you like you deserve.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this](http://takethatfiction.tumblr.com/post/149810886379/ready) challenge @ [takethatfiction](http://takethatfiction.tumblr.com) on tumblr.  
> I'm actually sorry this is so late, but I've been so busy it's crazy. It's not even beta read because of this, I couldn't wait :/ So take this into account, I might have done some unforgivable grammar mistakes lmao  
> The original idea was to write something purely based on Cry, but then idk what happened. I guess it still has a cry vibe to it, but I'm not really satisfied with it. :/ Hope it doesn't disappoint too much.  
> Also i wanted to point out that i'm aware this fic is literally crazy and scientists would laugh at me but yeah, i tried? lmao  
> A huge thank you to the admin who ran the challenge, i had fun writing this! I'm looking forward to any other challenges in the future :)

The first time Gary saw him had been at lunch. It’s not that it was the _first_ time; he was pretty sure he wasn’t new, and that he didn’t appear out of nowhere as well. That time, though, his eyes immediately focused on him, a short kid anxiously walking towards an empty table, eyes fixed on the ground and the attitude of someone who doesn’t want to be noticed. He stared at him as he proceeded to eat whatever was on his plate at an alarming speed, as if all he wanted in that moment was to get it over with and run away from the room.

“Gaz? Did you hear me?” The sharp tone of his friend’s voice made him wake up from his daydream and reluctantly turn around, now facing the other boy sat across the table. He nodded absent-mindedly, even if he actually didn’t hear anything of what he’d said, only to get sucked back in a useless conversation which, unfortunately, required his attention.

When he raised his gaze again, the boy wasn’t there anymore.

*

That afternoon, Gary got home soaked in sweat. A temperature like that wasn’t really normal but he blamed that on the fact that summer was just around the corner. He figured that the sun being still up in the sky wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

The house was empty, except for their cat who started purring and cuddling against Gary’s leg, begging for food.

As he filled up a bowl with water, he found himself thinking about blue eyes.

*

It’s not like he was obsessed or anything. For some reason, he always ended up staring at the table next to theirs. And yes, it had happened too many times to only be a coincidence, but it was part of a routine at this point. Sitting down, sharing the occasional opinion about a new band with Jason and then letting him talk without paying attention, while his eyes made sure that the table near them was occupied.

As weird as it seems, having something to do every day at the same hour almost calmed him.

*

Someone was singing in the school’s music room. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; that room was almost always occupied, somehow. The real problem was that this someone who was singing was also _good_ at it.

He stood in front of the door, stunned by what he recognized to be the chords for Can’t Help Falling In Love on the ukulele.

Out of curiosity, he opened the door, just enough to peep inside without being noticed. As soon as he eyed what was in the room, he immediately recognized the boy from lunch.

As if he’d got burned, he slammed the door closed, not daring to walk away or withdraw his hand from the handle.

He opened it again as he felt like he was being an idiot, finding himself staring at the boy once again. Gary chewed on his bottom lip, before letting out a hesitant, “Hi?”

The boy kept on staring at him, a spark of… amusement? in his blue eyes. He lifted his hand as a greeting, without saying anything. Gary raised an eyebrow. “Do you like… want me to leave or-”

The guy shrugged, his eyes suddenly dark again. For a moment, he thought he’d seen a smile somewhere on his lips, but now, he wasn’t so sure.

The two boys continued to stare at each other in complete silence for a minute. In spite of the always present yelling coming from the football field and the chattering in the corridors, in that moment, Gary could only hear silence.

Eventually, the boy made a _come in_   gesture, making a disbelieving face as if he couldn’t believe he did it.

Gary closed the door behind him, sitting next to the kid who, for some reason, seemed to enjoy the cool of the floor. “Anyway, uh- my name is Gary. Nice to meet you,” he managed to say, sticking his hand out for him to grab. The boy shook it but avoided to introduce himself, letting his weirded out expression do all the talking.

Gary bit his lip as his gaze got caught by the small instrument the boy had in his lap.

“You’ve got, um, a nice voice there,” he said, only to feel like an idiot afterwards. _A nice voice_ , wow.

The boy just smiled, and his face lit up along with his lips. As if he’d done something wrong, he quickly tried to hide it, biting on his bottom lip.

Gary raised an eyebrow. “You’re not really the talkative type, are you?”

He slightly shook his head, tightening the grip of his hands on the ukulele.

Gary felt a bit stupid to ask, but he did it anyway. “Can you play something else for me?”

The boy smiled for the second time since Gary had entered that room but, this time, he didn’t bother to hide it.

*

They didn’t even notice anything, at first. Meeting up in the same room every day became so natural to them that they would do it automatically. If Gary did not notice, Jason surely did.

“Gary? Hey!”

“...what?” He’d done it again. He was staring at the boy sitting across the room, who seemed determined to get a table all to himself every single day. He quickly turned around to face Jason, trying not to look guilty.

“You did it again.” It came out more like a sentence than a question.

“What?” Gary said, trying to look innocent. And failing.

Jason nodded in the direction of the infamous table. “That guy. You’ve been staring at him for days. And you always storm off as soon as you’re finished here. What the hell are you on about?”

“Nothing.” His answer came so rapidly that he almost believed it himself.

Jason made a sarcastic noise from the back of his throat. “What I am trying to say here is, don’t do anything stupid. I don’t trust you and your lack of judgment -”

“Look who’s talking.”

“-more than ever when the weather is this bloody hot,” he went on, completely ignoring Gary’s remark. “Actually, I wanted to ask you your opinion on this weird thing that’s going on with the weather. Do you think it’s normal? I mean, we don’t live in Las Vegas, I think something’s wrong -”

Gary nodded distractedly, happy to let Jason do all the talking and go back to his thoughts. He was still rambling, discussing with himself about global warming, when Gary noticed the boy was no longer in the room.

“People have no respect for penguins and- where are you going?”

Gary waved his hand at him as he quickly stood up from the table. “I just remembered I have stuff to do and- yeah, see you later, okay?” he said, and then ran off to the door as fucking fast as he could.

*

The first time the boy talked to him, he told him his name. 

“And then I told him, nothing, I’m not doing anything, because Jason can be annoying sometimes, you know? He was all like, that kid makes me anxious, and I was kind of like _what_ ? I mean, who fucking asked you-”

“Mark.”

“Like, it’s none of your business - wait, what?”

The boy looked at him with an amused face, only to move his gaze to the window three seconds later. “It’s Mark.”

Gary needed a moment to process the fact that he’d spoken. He didn’t have any problems when it came to sing in front of him, quite the opposite, but he had never really said anything outside of their little shows after lunch. As soon as he got back to reality, he nodded. “Mark. It suits you, I think.”

The kid - no, Mark - grabbed his ukulele and played the first chord of what Gary recognized as Master of Puppets by Metallica. He understood that the conversation was now over and started keeping the beat of the song with his fingers.

*

When he heard the news on TV, his only reaction had been to stay still in front of the scenes that kept following each other on the screen, unable to move.

“- scientists are still unsure as to when it will happen, but it seems that nothing can be done to avoid it. It has been verified that these drastic temperature changes all around the world are to be blamed on the Earth gradually drawing near the Sun. We don’t have any certain information yet but, as of now, a solution still hasn’t been found -”

At that, he stopped listening, and the woman talking on TV became an even background noise. She had a shocked expression, as if she couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her mouth.

The only thing his ears registered after that had been, _people are already talking about the apocalypse_.

He did the only thing his brain ordered him to do: he called Mark.

*

Days passed, but it seemed like nobody was talking about it. Like if everyone ignored it, it would go away. It wouldn’t be real. The temperature became hotter with every passing day, and Gary could only think desperately, _maybe it was a false alarm. Maybe it’s just summer coming_.

That option no longer mattered when the temperature reached 45 degrees in fucking June, and the situation became impossible to ignore.

People stopped going outside because it was too hot. Governments from all over the world were going crazy.  
His mother begged him to stay at home, to give up; it wasn’t safe, not anymore. But he kept leaving the house, and he only did it to see Mark.

It had been two weeks since he saw Jason, or Howard, or any other friend that wasn’t Mark. It seemed like the world had stopped.

The cat had gone outside and hadn’t come back.

He opened the school gate. The building looked like it no one had entered it in months. He started running towards what had become their room. As soon as he opened the door, he saw Mark sitting on the floor in his usual, familiar way. He was sitting cross-legged, but he didn’t look up when he heard him entering the room, he just kept staring at the white surface below him.

“Mark?”

“Gaz, it’s too hot,” he whispered, in a voice so sad and low to result almost inaudible.

Gary sat next to him, grabbing his face with his hands. “What’s going on?” he asked gently, moving one of them to his shoulder.

“My mum. They- they took her.”

“Who? Who took her?”

“I don’t know, Gaz, they’re taking away all the parents, I don’t know what’s happening, I’m scared.”

He threw his arms around Mark, trying to calm him, even if he didn’t understand.

“Haven’t you wondered why everything is so desolate?”

He hadn’t. He just thought that, well, people simply stayed inside their houses. As he realized what Mark had said, he whispered, “My mother.”

He immediately stood up, panic growing in his chest. “I gotta go, I-” Before he even finished the sentence, he was already out the door. Mark followed him.

*

“Mum? Dad?” he called out, opening the door, Mark behind him with a scared face. “Dad?” he kept shouting, until his throat started hurting. Mark grabbed him by his shoulders, forcing him to sit down on the floor. “They took them.”

“Mark, what the fuck is happening?” he exclaimed, unable to process what was happening. Mark seemed just as scared as him, only more alert.

He did the only thing that seemed right; he drew Gary to his body and held him as he cried, trying to calm him down. They were shaking, soaked in sweat. Gary kept repeating _why_?, incapable of saying anything else. They stayed like that the whole night.

*

It was impossible to tell night and day apart. The planet seemed to having stopped spinning, leaving Europe constantly exposed to the Sun, while the rest of the world was left to the dark.

No one really knew what was going on, or what happened to all the people who had disappeared. The only thing everyone was sure of was that the planet was still getting closer and closer to the Sun, and the distance between the two bodies didn’t even matter anymore.

It was worse than a bad film; except that it was real.

Gary and Mark were always together. They only did what had brought them together in the first place: playing music. All they did was writing song after song, songs nobody would ever hear. They only opened their mouths to change a particular chord progression, or to slow down the tempo. Both of them didn’t dare mentioning what was happening. Talking about it would have made it real, and they didn’t want that. Couldn’t want that.

*

Gary tried to open the window, covering his eyes with his other hand. He immediately closed it, crying out in pain when he withdrew his hand and noticed a burn already visible on his skin. He ran to the kitchen, reached for the sink and threw his hand under the running water, sighing in relief. Mark suddenly appeared in the room.

“Gary?”

He looked up, trying not to let panic show on his face. “I - I think it’s happening, Markie.”

*

Gary grabbed Mark’s hand.

They both looked at the wall in front of them, following the 

of the clock. What seemed like hours later, Gary turned around to face his friend, bringing his burned hand to his cheek.

“Gary-”

He interrupted whatever he was trying to say by covering his mouth, biting his lip when the burn stung.

He drew closer to him as he lowered his hand. His eyes had a hesitant spark in them, but he didn’t look down. Gary looked at him one more time, and then pressed his lips to Mark’s, a simple contact, skin against skin. Mark didn’t draw back.

Gary kissed him again, this time without hesitating. Mark brought a hand on the back of his neck, holding him like his life depended on it.

They left each other’s lips a few minutes later. It was too hot to do anything.

“In another world, another moment,” Gary told him, staring at his eyes, “in another life, maybe I could have loved you like you deserve.”

Mark nodded, without feeling the need to add anything. They held each other close, Mark’s head on Gary’s shoulder and Gary’s face on Mark’s neck.

They didn’t let go until the end.

 


End file.
